It’s MURICA’s birthday month, so starting off with some patriotic cheesecake is the order of the day! Also feels good to be back to my normal topics again after a long couple of weeks dealing with various personal health issues. Upward and onward with July’s update and a quick reminder to check out my mini news section for those of you who visit the site infrequently. (Video credit to DivideByeZer0)

So we’re going to start things off a little differently this month by talking about all the gaming news first than the “normie” stuff afterward. Thanks to a YouTube follower of mine @henriq1166, he let me know that Brown Dust 2 went into official release recently and that the game is available to play globally. I personally find the game to be of excellent production qualities but unfortunately not my particular cup of tea. But I want to strictly point out that this is my personal opinion and not a demerit to the quality of the game itself. I feel folks looking for a jrpg / srpg game will have a lot to like about BD2 so I advise you check it out. The above video by IWinToLose Gaming does a pretty good job summarizing BD2 and should allow you to make a decision whether or not the game is something you might like.

I’m a long time Yakuza fanboy, so my ears perked up quite a bit when it was announced that a new game in the series would be releasing this year on November 9th. On top of that another game will come out afterward early next year, date to be determined. You can jump into the series right now if you haven’t done so already since there are so many sales and promotions for the remastered releases as well as the newer titles. If you have Xbox game pass, you can play all of it for “free”, while the rest of you can snag the entire collection cheapy from other places like GoG.

Let’s slide right back into the normie stuff now with a video that is 18 hours long! I came across Plainly Difficult during my rehabilitation period recently. I had a lot of time on my hands and didn’t have a lot of things to watch, so I was lucky enough to find his channel chock full of interesting stories throughout the world that involved the usual expectation of mankind. Although I don’t like adding negative stuff on my blog for the sake of it (cause there’s so much of it already out there), I do find these videos to be done in a tasteful and non-sensationalized manner. I hope you like the content as much as I did, especially since I don’t want any of us to suffer from the “Ostrich Effect” by avoiding negative news on purpose.

Take it from someone who has been in physical rehabilitation for the last couple of weeks; it sucks being trapped indoors all day long. Unless you found 2020 to be the most exciting year of your life, chances are going outside to do stuff is probably a lot better. Even as a middle-aged gamer and internet nerd, I tend to yearn for some fresh air and some really bad food from time to time. So, I just wanted to remind all of you that summer (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) is upon us soon. Get your butt out of the chair and go do something while the weather is good and your health allows you to!

Artist of the month is Mirco Cabbia! If you didn’t read last month's blog (shame on you!) basically, Mirco is the type of artist that most AI algorithms will base their designs off of to some degree. If you look though his portfolio of work, you’ll notice the dynamic nature of the poses of the characters is still a lot better than most “static” poses that AI tends to favor (at least for now). In any case, check him out if you want a lot of eye candy and exceptionally well done art. And that wraps up July 2023! Hope you’re all doing well, and don’t forget to enjoy summer now that it’s here.